Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America by Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas

At my work, there is apparently a list somewhere of recommended reading that will help you understand the business. One of my coworkers had this book in their collection and mentioned it was on the list so I asked to borrow it.

The basic premise of the book is that every place has it's ambitious, non-ambitious, and those in between. In small, rural areas, the ambitious leave and those who stay have few and poor opportunities available to them. The book further comments that the small towns have designed the system in such a way that those from "good" families will be the ones that succeed and others will be looked over.

The lack of opportunities struck me a bit because people really don't make much here. Working the grant department, grants often have people's salaries listed in them if the grant is paying part of their salary. So I know what many people make. People with master's degrees are barely getting $30K. $50K puts you at the top of the pack. Admittedly, this is a non-profit, but my roommate has bemoaned the extreme lack of good paying jobs and it seems to be a common issue. Jobs are key to a successful economy and rural areas just don't have too many. That said, I don't know that there really is a "fix" to it as the book suggests. Let's say you got two really highly skilled companies in to a rural area and supported the schools in such a way that they were making enough skilled workers. What happens when one goes out of business or moves? Those skills aren't easily transferred in a rural area. Since employers can disappear at any time, it makes since that highly skilled jobs are concentrated in urban areas where workers have a multitude of places that they can turn to in case something happens to their employer. It also makes sense that rural areas tend to be concentrated with low skilled jobs that most people could potentially do. While it's unfortunate for those people that technology has made their jobs so extremely low skilled that they now pay very little and have fewer job opportunities in total, I feel like this book is largely bemoaning change. It's important to recognize the downsides of technological advancements and a service based economy and that's what I got from this. There are people out there whose lives are worse off because of things we largely see as positive and it would be great to help them. I am not convinced though that most rural towns truly can be revived to thriving economies.